Don't Trust the Census.

When the US Government rounded up Japanese-Americans in 1942, they used the supposedly private census data to tell the soldiers how many Japanese lived on each block. The Census Bureau handed out the data needed to put them into prison camps or otherwise be harassed. Reams of information came from the "strictly confidential" census. In 1943, a direct tabulation of "Every Japanese person living in Washington, DC", including name, address, sex, age, marital status, citizenship, profession, and employer, all taken directly from individual census records, was provided to the Secret Service. Throughout the war, individuals "of interest" to the FBI and Secret Service were looked up, and their private information was released for purposes of government harassment.

Don't participate in the census, don't work for it, don't fill it out, and feed it false data whenever you can. There is no effective law against doing so; the maximum penalty was $100 (Congress recently raised it to $5000), no jail, and it is VERY rarely enforced. The Constitution authorizes them to count heads every ten years, not to ask how many bathrooms you have and what racial group your ancestors are from.

The Department of Homeland Security asked the Census Bureau in 2003 for details about where Arab populations live in the United States, receiving detailed information about any town where more than 1000 people from Arabic-speaking countries are living. They also got a multi-hundred-page breakdown by Zip codes of every person who self-identified on the census as Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian, Arab/Arabic, or "Other Arab". The Electronic Privacy Information Center discovered this via the Freedom of Information Act and posted the results. EPIC also offers an overview of census privacy.

YOUR ethnic, religious, recreational, or occupational group might well be the next target of state-sponsored terror tactics. I'm talking about the US Government here, though of course the same information is available to both private organizations such as the KKK and the Hollywood MPAA anti-piracy enforcers, as well as to other governments. DON'T help idiotic extremists lock you up, smash your windows, terrorize your kids, sue you for having MP3s, burn crosses on your lawn, deport you for having parents from the wrong country, or draft you because you have a relatively rare skill. You can't predict what innocent trait of yours will inflame extremists next year or in the next fifty years. The best defense is to TELL THE CENSUS TAKERS NOTHING.

Previous abuses of census information

(The researchers blacked out the name and house number of each person when republishing this document in 2007. The original 1943 document revealed all the names and addresses.)

The authors believe that law enforcement lookups of such information were relatively routine during the war -- and that the FBI and other agencies tried to continue their access to this personal census information after the war, even after their legal authorization for access had lapsed. Read the paper, and their other papers, for the details.

News coverage about the Japanese-American Census roundup includes Scientific American's 2007 story "Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II", and USA Today's March 30, 2007 "Papers show Census role in WWII camps". Both include an apology from the 2000 Director of the Census, who didn't even know it had happened; some researchers had to dig it out of Commerce Dept. records because all memory of these releases had been scrubbed from the Census Bureau records.

This wasn't some fanciful injury to these peoples' privacy. This was rounding up not thousands, not tens of thousands, but more than a hundred thousand completely innocent Americans and forcing them into prison camps for years. Men, women, and children. Rounded up like cattle. The only difference between this and what the Germans did to the Jews was the lack of gas chambers. And it was those foolish people who trusted the Census Bureau's "oh sure we'll keep it very confidential" assurances that ultimately put them in the camps. Don't you believe it! We just had a spasm of national paranoia from 2001-2010, this time about Muslims, and poof, census data about Muslims got somehow released to our local Gestapo (the Department of Homeland Security). Who's next?

A more general reference is an editorial in the Wall Street Journal of 8/8/89, page A10, "Honesty May Not Be Your Best Census Policy", by James Bovard. I found a definitive copy in the SF Public Library on microfilm; your library probably has it. It documents a couple of violations.

The most obvious is that census data was used to round up the Japanese-Americans in 1942. "The Census Bureau provided the Army with a list of exactly how many Japanese-Americans lived in given neighborhoods, making it easy to round them up for internment during World War II. Census Bureau spokesman Ray Bancroft insists that this was not a breach of confidentiality because the bureau did not give out the names or exact addresses of Japanese-Americans. This is like someone claiming he bears no responsibility for setting loose on your block a wolf that just happened to gnaw on your leg -- simply because he didn't set the wolf free at your doorstep and tell the wolf to bite you personally." And it turns out he was wrong, the Census Bureau did actually hand out names and exact addresses, for example in the document shown above.

Other cases occurred in Montgomery County, MD; Pullman, Wash; Long Island Regional Planning Commission; and Urbana, IL; where census data released on a 'block' basis is used to check compliance with local building codes and zoning laws. A block can have as few as 6 houses; the average is 14. This clearly lets these governments pinpoint where to send their inspectors to charge people with violations.

The IRS tried to use computer matching of census data and private mailing lists to track down people wno don't file income taxes, in 1983.

All of the above is from the article. The maximum penalties are from the Census Act itself, I think it's Title 13 of the US Code. You can find it in any law library or government depository library (e.g. your city library or large university library). If you look in the "US Code Annotated" books then you'll find the court cases about the Census Act listed too.

General Sherman's march was powered by Southern census data

	 Census officials began treating the collected information as
     confidential, although no law required them to do so. The custom
     didn't keep the Union Army from turning census data into a weapon,
     however, thereby providing one of the earliest proofs of the second
     and third laws of data dynamics: that information produced for one
     purpose will be used for other purposes and eventually will cause
     harm to those who supplied the Information.

	 In 1864 Union General William Tecumseh Sherman concocted an
     audacious plan--a full-force march from Atlanta to the sea, which
     Civil War historian Bruce Catton called "the strangest, most
     fateful campaign of the entire war." Sherman set out not to
     engage another army; but to destroy the Confederate economy and
     to convey the message that the United States, in Sherman's words,
     "has the right, and also the physical power, to penetrate to
     every part of the national domain, and that we will do it
     ... that we will remove and destroy every obstacle--if need be,
     take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property,
     everything that to us seems proper." With the help of the census
     office--it was not yet called a bureau--he made a pretty fair try
     at fulfilling that promise.

	 He planned a fast, lean march. Doing so meant he would not be
     able to maintain conventional lines of supply; in those days
     before helicopter gunships and Harrier jets, an army was only as
     good as its ability to protect the roads, rivers, and railroads
     down which it had already traveled. Sherman would have to live
     off the countryside to a degree no Union or Confederate army had
     done before.

	 From the start of the war, Census Superintendent Joseph C. G.
     Kennedy had been earnestly providing the war effort with maps and
     census information on southern population and industry but had
     sparked only limited interest. Sherman, however, saw in Kennedy's
     annotated maps the key to his campaign.

	 In practical effect Kennedy had provided Sherman with a kind
     of Mobil guide for the plunder of the Confederate countryside,
     using data produced in more settled times by the very people
     Sherman encountered along his route. He gave his troops explicit
     orders to forage, a practice that until then was technically
     against the law. The army's mission included destroying mills,
     cotton supplies, railroads, anything of economic or military
     value. An Illinois sergeant wrote that his colleagues seemed "to
     take savage delight in destroying everything that could by any
     possibility be made use of by their enemies."

	 After the campaign, Sherman dropped Kennedy a thank-you note:
     "The closing scene of our recent war demonstrated the, value of
     these statistical tables and facts, for there is a reasonable
     probability that, without them, I would not have undertaken what
     was done and what seemed a puzzle to the wisest and most
     experienced soldiers of the world."

How to handle public meetings about the census

I just got back from a Census rah-rah meeting sponsored by two local Congresswomen. (Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi, I think. How times have failed to change in the intervening 30 years.) They had a bunch of folks from the Census Bureau plus people from the local Complete Count Committee. The Complete Count Committee represents local communities trying to get a good count, e.g. the homeless, blacks, arabs, Latinos, asians, etc. The Committee had little good to say about the Census Bureau, a litany of broken promises and no support. The homeless won't be counted well because sending in middleclass people scares them, and few homeless are willing to submit to an FBI check so they can work for the Census Bureau for a few weeks. Latino enumerators are required to pass an English literacy exam because the enumerator classes and administration forms are in English, even though the census forms themselves are available in Spanish. Census bureau outreach to schools has been botched by sending one lesson-plan packet to each school principal, none to teachers. Etc.

They tried to railroad the question-answer period so if you go to such a meeting, watch out for that. There were a bunch of people who were waiting to ask or comment when they said they would take two more questions. I interrupted them and called them on it, saying that they were more interested in telling us what to do than in listening to our questions and comments, and they said the meeting was advertised to end at noon. They then spent the next ten minutes blathering, thanking everyone for coming and etc. They didn't get away with it because they were cornered in the hall by about 40 people (most of the audience) and had to listen and respond for another 25 minutes.

I found that my first question, "Didn't the census bureau supply the Army with the locations of all the Japanese-Americans in 1942 so that they could be taken off to concentration camps?" provoked quite a stir in the audience. The Census Bureau's answer didn't quiet the stir. I asked it in response to their speech about the utter "confidentiality" of the information. However, this alerted them that I was a troublemaker and thereafter, a Congresswoman interrupted whenever it looked like the moderator was going to call on me. Moral: Bring a few people and don't sit together!

My second question I squeezed in at the end after they tried to squelch further discussion. It was "If someone decides not to answer the census, what is the maximum penalty? Can they be sent to jail?" The first phrase is critical, the whole meeting had not even mentioned that someone could "decide not to answer", they talked about "undercounts" and "outreach efforts" and "refugees from repressive governments who we need to convince about our government". Unfortunately the Census Bureau rep lied in his answer, saying $1000. The Census Act specifies a penalty of $100.

I spoke with the Census rep afterward, and he surprised me by saying that his parents and siblings were taken to the internment camps (he is Japanese- American). But he still doesn't see anything wrong with the census. He said that the data the Army used was available to everyone -- not noticing that the mere collection of the data makes its abuse, as well as its use, inevitable. He seemed to be slightly moved by my charging him with making it easier for the next round-up, say of Central Americans or drug users. (The data they supplied was how many Japanese lived in each block in the country. The average block contains 14 houses. If the data says 5 Japanese live on this block, they just have to search until they find the household (two parents, three kids) and then they can go on to the next block, skipping completely the ones with no Japanese. In short, it made the repression a lot easier to administer. Their defense is that they didn't give out names and addresses -- just which block each Japanese-American lived in. However -- in 2007, research has determined that the census bureau DID reveal specific addresses of Japanese people to the agencies of state oppression, so that those people could be harassed by the federal government. See images above.)

They have a publicity machine cranking up for the rest of the month so there will probably be plenty of opportunities for Libertarians to speak out on this issue. I encourage every Libertarian candidate for office to take a stand now, while the Census is "newsworthy". You might call local radio station personalities and see if they will do a show about the Census (with you in the studio!). The morning commuter shows might be a good place, and the late night national and regional talk shows.

A good starting point for research is the Wall Street Journal, 8/8/89, page A10, editorial by James Bovard of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This one page (reproduced below) will give you more points than you're likely to be able to bring up in a meeting or talk show.

Consequences of Census Resistance

Since the census bureau only filed against one person in 1960 and one in 1970 (and later dropped the charges, according to the mailout from the Committee for Census Privacy), I don't intend to answer non-count questions, either. If they try to prosecute thousands of us it will cost them more than what it's worth (I hope).

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* Origin: Liberty Houston (713) 785-4763 (Opus 1:106/1776)

Date: Mon, 09 Apr 90 12:50:19 -0700 I read a summary of the case that indicated $100/question but I haven't read the actual case. At any rate I don't think it set a national precedent, or was applied against more than one person. It wasn't a Supreme Court case, just a local Federal district court case.

In 1960 two people were prosecuted for resisting the Census.
In 1970 one person.
In 1980 we don't have figures but it wasn't masses of people. They don't like to give it publicity. I went to a meeting with two Congresswomen and the local Census honchos, and they were quite careful to even avoid mentioning the possibility that people might DECIDE to not answer the census. They kept talking about undercounts and such, but implying it was all due to mistakes or 'missing some people' rather than those people DECIDING not to be part of the sham.

Date: Fri, 16 Mar 90 16:52:36 -0800

One court case held the $100 to be per question, not per form. I don't recall which district it was binding in, and didn't look up the case itself, so I don't know if it was used to charge somebody $800 for not answering all 8 questions, or $100 for not answering one of the questions though they answered the rest, or what. The US Code Annotated (look in the index under the Census Act) has the reference to the case, which you can then look up in the cases from that district. It doesn't set a national precedent because it wasn't a Supreme Court case.

Libertarian Party position on the 1990 census

So long as the National Census and all federal, state, and other government agencies' complilations of data on an individual continue to exist, they should be conducted only with the consent of the persons from whom the data is sought.

Here's a press release from some Libertarian congressional candidates:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: June Genis (415) 851-5224
or (415) 723-4422
Congressional Candidate Protests Census Penalties

Redwood City --June Genis, who is opposing Tom Lantos in the 11th Congressional District on the Libertarian ticket, has indicated that she will not fully comply with the 1990 census as a protest against the current criminal penalties for non-compliance. Genis says that while she is "proud to stand up and be counted" that she will answer only the head-count questions and leave all others unanswered.

"Many of the questions asked on the census are harmless and I expect most people, including myself, would probably not mind answering them for anyone. But other questions are very invasive of personal privacy and I do not believe that anyone should be subjected to hundreds of dollars in fines for failing to answer them or for giving incorrect answers". She also noted that the sixth of the population which will be required to complete the long forms are being asked to invest several hours of unpaid labor on behalf of the government which will then turn around and sell the results to private companies. "Why should any Americans be forced to become market research subjects against their will and without compensation?"

Genis also noted that despite the vigorous, and likely expensive, advertising campaign to convince us of the confidential nature of census responses, it was census data that helped to round up Japanese Americans for the Word War II internment camps. "No, the Census Bureau did not tell the internment team that Mr. Yamaguchi lives at 123 Main Street, but they did supply the information that exactly five Japanese Americans live on the 100 block of Main Street which made it very easy for them to know where to go and how many bodies they should be able to collect on each street."

Pointing out that although the Constitution empowers Congress to conduct a census for the purpose of apportioning representation, there is nothing there which empowers them to demand answers to any questions they chose to ask. "Yet", says Genis, "they have taken the position that it would perfectly all right for them to compel you to enumerate what weapons you own or what illicit substances you consume and pretend that this would not be a violation of your constitution rights just because they won't divulge any individual answers. We have already heard proposals to create concentration camps for drug users and to seize all privately owned semi-automatic weapons. There is simply no way to tell how the answers that people supply today might be used against them in the future".

One person's approach to the American Housing Survey

As we are now starting to receive our 1990 census forms, I thought some of you might like to know about the experience I had this time last year with a similar survey from the census bureau, called the American Housing Survey.

In April of 1989, Nancy Butter rang my doorbell and asked me to answer several questions about my house, my neighbors, my neighborhood, etc., under the guise of something called the American Housing Survey. I told her I was not interesting in participating and after a moderate length discussion on how important this was and how I would be throwing off all the statistics, she left me a 6 page brochure describing the survey and told me that I would be receiving a letter from the Regional Director, an Arthur G. Dukakis.

[As it turns out, Arthur IS related to Michael -- he's a cousin, I think.]

I received the following letter, dated April 17:

Dear Mr. Groupe:

We recently visited you and asked that you participate in the American Housing Survey. The U.S. Bureau of the Census is conducting this survey in many metropolitan areas for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This survey is conducted under the authority of Title 12, Section 1701Z-1 and 2g of the United States Code.

You indicated to the interviewer who visited you that you did not wish to participate in this survey. This survey is so important that we hope that a further explanation will cause you to reconsider your decision.

The primary purpose of the American Housing Survey is to provide current information on the size and composition of housing in your area. We ask questions about the housing people live in, the age of the buildings, the presence of selected facilities in your home, and the adequacy of neighborhood services.

In a society as complex as our, it is necessary that our nation's decision makers be as well informed as possible in order to make the decisions that affect the lives of us all. The job of the U.S. Bureau of the Census is to be provide [sic] our national and local government leaders, as well as our business leaders, with statistical information on various aspects of our society.

Any information provided for this survey is confidential, by law, under Title 13, Section 9a, United States Code. No information which would identify an individual will be released. Your answers will be used only to prepare statistical summaries. Our interviewers and our office staff have been sworn to confidentiality and I can assure you that the record of the U.S. Bureau of the Census is unblemished. You will, by participating make a valuable contribution to the knowledge of the nation's housing. In the future, when you see or hear housing statistics, you will know that you helped in the preparation of these figures. I trust that we can rely on you to help.

Our representatives will call on you again within the next few days.

Sincerely,
Arthur G. Dukakis
Regional Director

I responded with the following letter:

Dear Mr. Dukakis,

Recently, one of your field interviewers visited me and requested that I donate my time -- I presume that I'm paying her for hers -- to participate in the American Housing Survey. She then handed me a fact sheet so that I might know what this survey is about.

According to the fact sheet, this information will be used to assist the federal government in establishing a national housing policy. Since it is my fervent belief that the only proper housing policy would have no role for government, and since I do not believe that this is the type of policy the American Housing Survey is intended to engender, I could not in good conscience comply with your request.

You then sent me a letter asking me to reconsider, based on all the nice, wonderful things government does with all the information it collects. In your letter you stated, "In a society as complex as ours, it is necessary that our nation's decision makers be as well informed as possible in order to make the decisions that affect the lives of us all."

I couldn't disagree with you more. In a society as complex as ours, it is necessary that our nation's decision makers STOP MAKING SO MANY DECISIONS that affect the lives of us all.

In closing your letter to me you indicated that once again you would be sending an interviewer to talk to me. It angers me greatly that you are: 1) collecting data for an inappropriate purpose; 2) asking me to donate substantial amounts of my time to assist you (I remember the virtual novel your department asked me to fill out in 1980); 3) spending MY hard-earned money to do so; and 4) ignoring my wishes by sending out a second interviewer after I believe I made it clear that I did not wish to participate.

Maybe when the government learns that it is not entitled to the services of its citizens, people like me would be more willing to cooperate. But until such time, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Sincerely,

Alan Groupe

I didn't hear anything more from them.

-- Alan Groupe | Data: (603) 672-9662
2 Great Brook Road | Cserve: 73607,2241
Milford, NH 03055 | uucp: decvax!ubbs-nh!trashbin!alang
(603) 672-9155 | alang@trashbin.mv.com

A Japanese-American view of the census